"Ugly Betty" (3.12) recaplet: Sisters on the verge of a nervous breakdown

On this week's Ugly Betty our heroine is still trying to juggle work and home life, with varying degrees of success. Her father is recovering after heart surgery, the relationship with her sister has become strained, and she makes a gaffe at work that leads to the single greatest scene in the history of this show.

All this and more, in this week's Very Special Ugly Betty.

It's been two weeks since Papi was rushed to the hospital, and his recovery at home from quadruple-bypass surgery means his doting daughters (and grandson) are making his life a living hell. Thankfully, it's time for Betty and Hilda to go back to work, and they decide to split the responsibilities of caring for their father.

Unfortunately, Betty's mild OCD rears its head, which leads to a disturbing Post-It reveal in the kitchen. Colorful squares of paper cover the walls, each one containing its own insane rambling (I think I saw the exact same thing on Dexter). In fact, if you zoom in, you can see messages like "try the turkey bacon - yummy!", "Be Happy! around Papi", and "It puts the lotion on its skin".

Hilda assures her sister that everything will be fine, and Betty returns to her apartment, which has been completely overrun by the most annoying nuisance an apartment dweller must deal with. No, not Amanda ... it's cockroaches! Because of Amanda's slovenly ways the place is infested, but she's grown to love the critters, and even named one of them "Betty" because like her namesake ... she's a "survivor".

Returning to Mode for the first time in two weeks, Betty is overwhelmed by the amount of work that's stacked up, but it's about to get worse. Daniel asks her to send his vacation photos (where he was canoodling with Molly) to be printed, but with all of the other work distractions and phone calls about Papi, she gets flummoxed and accidentally sends the pictures to ... Suzuki St. Pierre.

There is good news for Papi, though. When Claire Meade (the criminally underused Judith Light) learns that Betty's family physician is named Dr. Steve, she insists that Papi use the services of the cardiologist in the Meade wing of St. Snooty's Hospital.

When Daniel finds out that Betty accidentally sent his vacation pics to Suzuki, he insists that she get them back. He promised Molly that he'd keep their relationship secret for now, and can't have those pictures splashed all over the gossip pages.

She rushes off to try to convince Suzuki to give the pics back, but of course he refuses. As a last resort, she turns to Amanda and Marc for help, who inform her that the only way to get through to a serious journalist like that ... is to blackmail him.

As luck would have it, Suzuki's ex works at Meade, and after some cajoling (and threats involving "ambiguous genitalia"), Betty and Amanda manage to finagle an address out of him. But the address is for some place in New Jersey. Certainly the gossip queen of NYC doesn't live in New Jersey ... right?

Hilda is occupied styling the hair of a roomful of teenage girls, so Betty takes Papi to the hospital (he has a hacking cough they want to have checked out), and when they inform her that his medical tests will take a few hours, she leaves him there and she and Daniel decide to investigate that mysterious Jersey address.

And this is where the episode goes from fairly good to "instant classic".

Daniel and Betty pull up at a pleasant house in the Jersey suburbs, and after rifling through the mailbox learn that the occupant is named Byron Wu. Guessing that it must be the name of Suzuki's boyfriend, they soon realize their error ... their horrible, jaw-dropping error ... when a mini-van pulls up to the curb.

Hiding behind the house's white picket fence (seriously), they see two young kids (with a soccer ball!), a woman, and a man get out. The man tells his kids "nice hustle over dere, kiddos! Now let's get dressed, get inside, and I'll go grill some brauts". The wife smiles and says "you herd your fadder", and she and the kids run inside. The man turns around and sees Betty and Daniel, who walk up and say "Hi Suzuki ... or should we say ... Byron?"

Suzuki/Byron explains (in between grilling those brauts) that after he graduated journalism school, he couldn't get a job as "Byron", but as bitchy gossip queen "Suzuki", he's a star. Daniel and Betty use his dual-identity secret as leverage to get the pictures back, and soon leave, but I hope this isn't the last we see of Byron.

Alec Mapa deserves serious Emmy consideration for this performance, which is completely believable, from the Jersey voice (which I was convinced at first must have been dubbed) to the way he moves in and out of the Suzuki persona at will (which Betty appropriately calls "creepy"). Seriously, this was the funniest fake alter-ego scam since the awe-inspiring Ramtha.

That crisis averted, Betty heads back to the hospital where she's informed that Papi's tests were finished a while ago, and he left. Frantic, she calls Hilda, who comes to the hospital and immediately jumps down Betty's throat for leaving their father. The doctor informs them that Papi's test came back fine, and eventually Justin (remember him?) calls with the good news that Papi returned home.

Hilda and Betty have the huge blowout we've all been expecting, but I'm still not sure what Hilda's problem is. She blames Betty for not being there when the family needs her, but I think when it comes down to it, she's jealous of Betty's career and new life, and resents having to be at home (oh, and there's that whole "post-it" thing, too).

Papi tries to smooth things over between them, and tells them that he's hired a part-time nurse (paging Lauren Velez!) to help out, which will take some of the burden off.

Betty and Hilda come to an understanding, but when Betty gets back to her apartment, Amanda can sense that something has changed. Betty has decided to move back home to be with her family. (That's Betty the girl, not Betty the cockroach.)

Meanwhile, Marc had a terrific outing this week, and we saw another side to him they wouldn't have shown in the first season (although that hideous orange ascot he wore for much of the episode made him look like the gay little brother of Fred from Scooby-Doo).

Wilhelmina and Connor are carrying on like horny teenagers at the Mode offices, and it's up to Marc to keep people from finding out and try to keep ad clients occupied. When some bigwig clients come in and are made to wait while Connor and Willi rock the conference room, he takes that opportunity to see if his YETI training has paid off, and meets with the clients himself.

It's working well until Willi comes in and berates and belittles him in front of the clients, and he leaves almost in tears. Later, Willi presents him with a gift from the clients, but when he seems less than grateful, she's livid. "You're my assistant, you took a hit for me, I brought you a fancy gift. I expect gratitude." When he starts blathering about being there for four years, and how she humiliated him, she explodes: "getting thrown under the bus to make me look good is part of your job! Unless you'd like to find another job?" He says no and slinks away, and I may be a horrible person for saying this, but I love the evil Willi.

Their final scene has Willi about to leave for lunch with Tom Ford, but there's also an ad meeting that someone needs to attend. Saying how "tiresome" those meetings are, Willi offers it to Marc, "if he can handle it." He immediately goes into shock and says "give my love to Tom and his chest hair", and as Willi leaves the room you can see the obvious delight on his face.

I really loved this week's Willi/Marc dynamic. She was her usual gloriously horrible self, but in the end came through for Marc (without actually admitting it).

There's one other interesting element to this week's episode, and that's with Connor. Daniel makes it a point to mention early on how "jealous" Connor could get in college, and at the end of the episode Connor sees a tabloid picture of Molly holding someone's hand on the beach (it's actually Daniel, but he's cut of the pic).

***Spoiler-related speculation

I think they may be starting the set-up for Molly's predicted departure. If it's a murder, they may be trying to plant clues for the audience ... or red herrings.

***End Spoiler

Oh, and there's one other thing about this episode, something that I know will give me nightmares forever. When Willi and Connor and going at it at Mode, one of the places they end up is the men's room. At least, I think it's the men's room. Connor mentions having to pee, and they pan over to this:

Could someone please explain to me what the hell this is? Is it modern art? Am I the only one who would take one look at that and think, "I'll hold it til I get home"?

As for this week's episode, I give it another solid eight of ten.

What are your thoughts about this week's episode? Let us know, and be and come back in two weeks as it looks like Betty might finally get things going with her supercute neighbor!